'As Many as Possible'

Police break up alleged mass killing plot by South Pas High School students

Two South Pasadena teenagers were arrested on Monday on preliminary charges of conspiracy and making criminal threats.

According to South Pasadena police, the unidentified boys, ages 16 and 17, planned to shoot three specific South Pasadena High School administrators and as many students as possible.

“It was very viable, what they were plotting,” South Pasadena police Chief Art Miller said at a press conference on Tuesday. “They were making a huge plan of a school massacre that identified three staff members at the school by name that they were targeting,” as well as random students. “They just wanted to kill as many people as possible.”

According to police Sgt. Brian Solinsky, the boys had not obtained weapons but were in the process of checking on their availability. Police said the boys wanted to carry out the attack for personal reasons and were willing to die to accomplish their plan.

The suspects had been looking on the Internet for ways to obtain automatic weapons and explosives. No date for the attack had been set.

One of the boys was arrested without incident, but police forced their way into the second student’s home after he attempted to flee while officers were serving a search warrant.

Computers were seized from the homes of both boys.

Solinsky said in a prepared statement that school officials became aware of suspicious behavior by the pair last week and contacted law enforcement authorities.

“It was this information that helped prevent a horrific tragedy,” Solinsky said.

The plot in South Pasadena comes on the heels of the arrest of a 15-year-old boy on Sunday. In that case, authorities said the boy posted online threats to shoot students at schools in the Santa Clarita Valley as a prank.

Officials said the teen, who was arrested after investigators served a search warrant at his home, wrote the posts on social media site Instagram to get a reaction from his friends.

The suspect “actually had no intention of carrying out these threats,” Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Joshua Dubin said in a prepared statement. “We still take it very seriously. Many of the posts that were made contained hateful-type messages — racist, sexist threats to students — and that’s what immediately got deputies involved.”